


Friends Never Say Goodbye

by Mertiya



Series: RvB Prompt Wars [1]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Catharsis, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, RvB Angst War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 06:48:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6228121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the events of seasons 9-12, Washington tries to come to terms with Connie's death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friends Never Say Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RenaRoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RenaRoo/gifts).



            He asks about it almost as soon as he realizes whose they are. “Boss—”

            “ _What?_ ” Carolina isn’t in the mood to talk right now, her conscience is weighing on her, all the dead friends in her mind screaming for vengeance.

            “Can I have them?”

            “No.”

            Washington sighs, a soft little ghost of a sound that tweaks at something deep inside Carolina. “I don’t mean now,” he explains. “I mean when you’re done with them.”

            “Why?”

            This time he goes utterly still, so still that for a moment he could be a statue, no breath, no feeling, just solid, unyielding stone. When he speaks again, his voice is a quiet monotone. “Because I fucked up.”

            She’s not sure what he means by that, but she won’t need them when she’s through, so she nods. “Sure,” she says.

~

            Somehow, it’s never the right time. He needs to do this properly. It can’t just be a few snatched moments stolen somewhere along the way. She deserves better than that. She deserves so much better than what happened to her, so much better than him, but at the very least, he can do this right. He thinks, perhaps, once they reach earth, he’ll be able to find a good place.

            And then they don’t reach earth. Instead, their ship crashlands on a strange world, and he can’t bury her on Chorus. It’s no one’s home. It’s a desert island, a place they’ve been stranded, a brief resting spot before they continue their journey home. That’s what he tells himself at first, anyway. As the days slip on and Carolina and Church disappear, he’s not so sure anymore, but he keeps the tags. They are a solid weight against his chest beneath his armor, reminding him to be careful, reminding him he never knows what could happen the next day. He has to be prepared for anything.

            Sometimes, when he has Tucker and Caboose running obstacle courses, his vision blurs, and he’s watching her run the training course at Project Freelancer. She was always faster than he was; he could never quite catch up. If only Epsilon hadn’t torn his memory into shreds, at least he’d be able to reliably recall her face. Instead, all he gets are these fleeting glimpses, moments suspended out of context in time. Connie laughing her ass off at one of Wyoming’s jokes that no one expected to be funny—least of all Wyoming—but she’s laughing so hard she falls off her chair. A pair of brown eyes glancing up at him, and a soft voice saying, “Cut it out, rookie, you’re part of the team now.” He doesn’t know why she’s saying that or what she’s trying to reassure him of, but he knows it did reassure him.

            When Tucker wants to know why he always has to run laps, Wash stalls, because he can’t tell if he’s doing the right thing anymore. Connie’s tags are cold against his chest. He has to be able to protect them—he can’t lose anyone else—but he can hear Connie’s angry voice ringing in his ears, _They’re drawing a line between us, Wash_.

            _No,_ he protests, _that’s not what I’m doing. I just want them to be safe, I need them to be safe_. In the end, it’s Tucker’s voice that gets through to him, and it’s all right again. But he still hears her, _Call me CT_. Even as he reminds himself to breathe, stay in the present, with Tucker and Caboose, both of them safe, both his teammates safe, he can’t ignore that voice entirely. It’s hard to shake the crippling feeling of past failures, but Tucker’s blunt voice and brown eyes do help anchor him.

            Then Tucker is gone again, a landslide and a war dividing them, and the past reaches up to suck Wash back down. It’s not easy to lead a rescue attempt when every so often he sees her tucking a strand of hair behind one ear or feels her warmth against him and hears her moan. Worst when it’s his name. No, maybe worst when it’s South’s.

            Donut wakes him up one night, dragged out of a memory of shooting South, except she has her helmet off, and the look on her face is almost comical in its surprise as the neat bullet hole appears in her forehead. “Wash, are you okay? You were screaming,” Donut says carefully. Washington runs a shaking hand through his hair and then clutches for the tags. They’re still there. She’s still next to his heart, and he closes his eyes in something that might be thanks. Then there are arms around his torso, and his eyes are open again, and he’s stiffening in surprise. “You’re getting a hug, Mister, and there’s nothing you can do about it,” Donut says. Wash doesn’t have the words to respond to that, so he huffs out a laugh instead and doesn’t pull away. In the morning, Washington wakes to arms around him, to Sarge looking down curiously. He glares, and Sarge grins. “Don’t look at me like that, son. Looks like you got yourself a new life as a stuffed animal from now.” Wash’s surprised laugh is echoed in his head by Connie’s, but for the first time, hearing her voice doesn’t hurt.

            There’s one brief moment of relief at seeing Tucker and the others, safe, before Felix betrays them. Then his chest is tight and cold, and he thinks that trust should not be a sin, but somehow his trust always is—his trust betrays his friends and gets them killed, and before he knows what he’s doing, he’s going to step in front of Tucker, take a bullet for him if he can (he’d have taken a bullet for Connie if he could, for South too, but he forgot that when he took her bullet in his back.) There’s a strange moment where he wonders if the tags could stop a bullet—and then, as everything falls apart around him, Carolina is there. His world rocks, but doesn’t shatter.

            It’s an angry reunion for everyone. Wash is pretty sure he still has some unresolved issues with Epsilon himself, and it’s blatantly obvious that Tucker does as well. Still, this is a moment to breathe between battles, and Wash knows what he would have said if he’d seen Connie again, because the words burn in his mouth, sour with regret, and he says them to Tucker instead. They sound too clinical even to Wash’s ears, but Tucker’s startled brown eyes are soft, even as he deflects and jokes around them. There’s actually a hug—“that’s kind of gay, man.”

            “ _You’re_ kind of gay,” Wash blurts without thinking, which is supposed to be a joke—maybe—and Tucker arches his eyebrows and waggles them.

            “Fuck yeah I am,” says Tucker, and then he shrugs and fucking _dip-kisses_ Washington, because never let it be said that Tucker does things by halves.

            There’s a moment of total silence, and then someone wolf-whistles, and for a moment he thinks it’s South. But it’s not—it’s _Carolina_ , of all people, and she’s joined by scattered laughter and more whistles, and Donut shouting encouragement and advice that Washington can’t keep track of, but who cares? Because they’re a team, and they’re his team, and they’re _safe_ , and they’re going to save this damn planet, whether it wants to be saved or not.

            When Locus beats him, there’s a moment where he’s curling around his chest protectively as if she’s there and he can keep her safe. As if she’d ever want him to keep her safe. As if she hadn’t given her life to try to save them. The pain in his body is muted compared to that, and he laughs at Locus, because he’s so far past Locus being able to hurt him like this, it’s funny. Locus beats him harder when he hears the strangled noises, but it doesn’t matter, because Locus can’t hurt Connie, and now he can’t hurt the planet anymore either. Locus is stuck spinning his wheels in a spot Wash abandoned long ago, that he thinks he’s had some kind of redemption for since—a while ago. He thinks he realized it when Donut hugged him, but he must have had it before, or Donut never would have. So Locus is basically irrelevant, and that only seems to make the other man angrier. Once Locus leaves, Carolina finds Washington, drags his helmet off, and stares at him. “Jesus, Wash, I thought—”

            “Locus is a crazy son of a bitch,” he says tiredly. “Carolina, there’s something I need to do.”

            There’s still something of a delay, because there’s the part where Tucker’s been stabbed, and that’s a whole new heart attack waiting to happen. Wash sits beside him and holds his hand as Palomo sobs irritatingly over his shoulder, and finally he says, “Palomo, if you could give me a moment with my dying lover, I’d appreciate it.” Palomo backs off, horrified. “You’re going to be fine,” Wash tells Tucker, and Tucker grins back tiredly.

            “Thanks for getting him off my back.”

            There’s a beat, and then it’s Washington who’s clearing his throat and saying, “ _Bowchicka_ —oh, god, I can’t.”

            And Tucker is laughing too hard and also wincing. “Dammit, Wash, you’re not supposed to make me fucking laugh when my guts are spilling out of my stomach.”

            “You’re going to be fine,” Washington says again, sternly. And maybe it’s his memories of South and Connie, or maybe it’s Tucker’s influence, because he cracks a smile and says, “I’d rather get you to spill something else.” Tucker actually hits him.

            But he was right, because Tucker _is_ fine, they’re all fine, and the planet—well, if it’s not saved, it’s definitely moving in that direction. And Washington thinks that now, maybe, Chorus—well, it’s not earth. But when you’ve saved a planet, it’s almost like home, and the tags were with him the whole time, they’ve seen Chorus from top to bottom just like he has, so he doesn’t think she’ll mind.

            He asks Donut first, though he’s not sure why. Donut first, then Carolina, then Tucker, when he’s a little more recovered. Then the rest of the Reds and the Blues. There’s not really a good place for it—or maybe there’s not really a bad place for it, but eventually they decide on a spot a little outside the capital city. It’s a small clearing on the mountainside, nothing too special, but there are red pine needles carpeting the grove around huge blocks of fallen concrete that stop at the edge of a narrow creek, and somehow he just thinks she’d like it here. It’s not a bad place.

            He thinks he should have something to say, but once he’s pulled out the tags, he doesn’t, somehow, and the breath he took into his lungs to speak just trickles back out again. Carolina puts a hand on his shoulder. “Do you want me to—” He shakes his head and looks around at the others.

            “I know you never met her,” he says finally. “But you would have liked her.” There’s so much more in his head and his heart, but he doesn’t know how to make words out of it, out of all the scattered images and impressions and half-faded memories that are what he has left.

            Epsilon’s image, hovering at Carolina’s shoulder, flickers and changes, and they’re looking at Connie’s profile, floating in the air. There’s a silent, gaping emptiness, and Wash thinks that he can’t do this. He can’t _leave_ her like this, he can’t—Tucker’s voice breaks it. “Hell, yeah, I’d have liked her. You think she’d have been up for a threesome?”

            “Tucker!” Simmons says, sounding scandalized, but Washington is laughing.

            “Probably,” he says with a grin. “Remind me to tell you a story sometime.”

            “Hoooooly shit, man, seriously?”

            He’s not leaving her. And he’s not Church—well, not much—clinging to the memory of a dead woman who didn’t say goodbye. Connie wasn’t the love of his life. She was better than that. She was her own person, and she was his friend. Sometimes you bury friends. But you don’t say goodbye to friends, because they don’t stop being your friends. Connie wouldn’t, no matter what, any more than Carolina would, any more than Tucker or Donut or any of the rest would, even if there were fights and arguments and fuck-ups on both sides. Washington smiles, plucks the tags off over his head, kneels down and scratches away some of the soft earth so that he can tuck the tags safely into the ground, then stands up and brushes off his knees and takes a deep breath. “See you, Connie.”

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt, "Wash asks Carolina for CT's dogtags to bury once they're done with them"


End file.
